A California courtroom came to order on Thursday not with the sound of a gavel, but after a parade of feedback screeched through participants' computer speakers.

The courtroom was a virtual one, as San Mateo County Superior Court hosted its second civil bench trial via Zoom after the state's coronavirus lockdown procedures largely ground civil proceedings to a halt.

Despite a fair share of technical issues that required a court IT staffer to swoop in and save the day, lawyers in the trial said the proceedings have gone well so far, and the future of jury civil trials might just be virtual.

Attorneys on both sides began their opening remarks by thanking Zoom in a case over the construction and sale of an Atherton, California, home with "serious and substantial defects," according to the briefs.

"It's a new way of doing trial, but I'm glad we're able to get the trial moving forward," said David Marks of GCA Law Partners in Mountain View, California.

The first couple of hours were punctuated with phrases such as "You're muted, your honor," and "Your honor, screen sharing is disabled," and a witness' audio was "connecting" for about five minutes before he officially joined. But Judge Marie Weiner and all the participants seemed to keep their cool.

In roughly the first five minutes of the trial, plaintiffs attorney Glen Van Dyke of Van Dyke Litigation and Trial Attorneys in Truckee, California, found that his Macbook Pro froze for the first time in eight months.

Weiner responded by saying, "It might be easiest to hang up and dial back in. We'll take a couple sips of coffee while you do."

But both lawyers were surprised to find that these technical issues didn't seem to be causing the trial to drag on longer than it would've in Weiner's Redwood City courtroom.

"I thought it would take longer because of what I perceived as the clunkiness of exhibits, but in reality, at least for most lawyers, it's way more clunky when everyone is going through their 16 binders to find an exhibit every time one is trying to be used," Van Dyke said in an interview after the first day's proceedings. "Here, all of your exhibits are just a touch of a screen away."

In fact, Van Dyke said, "I kind of prefer it now."

Van Dyke recommends having a separate device, such as an iPad, nearby to pull up exhibit file names to more easily navigate to them and share them via Zoom.

Marks, who also anticipated lengthier proceedings, left feeling that the ability to share the around 77 exhibits virtually made the trial more efficient. However, it did require a different type of preparation, Marks said. Ahead of the trial, he went into his office to frame the shot a bit.

"I wanted to make sure my office looked correct for what the camera could see, and I did some test runs with people on screenshare," he said. "I put my papers in a certain place, so that I was hopefully looking at the camera for most of it. I read some articles on Zoom trials, and they said practice that, because it's best if you don't look away."

For virtual trial wins, Marks recommends getting very comfortable with Zoom and don't rely on wireless Internet.

"Be on top of the technology, because you don't want the technology to control the case, you want to control the technology yourself," he said. "I think some people might think, 'I'll just wing it on the Zoom.' That's a really bad idea."

Van Dyke's biggest challenge with the Zoom trial was not being able to use body language to make an argument or encourage responses from a witness. But he's already come up with a solution for that.

"I'm going to put a camera in my office that can then get a whole body view, so that it can show me at my desk, so you could see my whole body," he said. "And then, I'll use a headset for the microphone, so that I don't have to worry about being close to the computer."

Both attorneys said they would definitely conduct trial by Zoom again.

"I can see it being a way of the future, because the future is the present right now, and nothing is changing for a long time," Marks said.